New polling by ProgressNowNM and Public Policy Polling show that a large majority of New Mexicans now disapprove of the job Susana Martinez is doing as governor — and an even larger number oppose Republican plans to oppose common-sense revenue enhancements to balance the budget.

At the request of ProgressNowNM, Public Policy Polling (PPP) conducted a survey of 881 New Mexico voters (voted in 2016 elections) using a combination of live and online surveys from Thursday February 23 – Saturday February 26, 2017.

Governor Martinez Job Approval

The governor maintains her historically low job approval ratings, with just 42% of New Mexicans believing she is doing a good or excellent job, while 57% disapprove (including 59% of self-identified Hispanic voters).

While Martinez’s approval ratings continue to hover in this area (last pinned at 42% in 8/16 by an Albuquerque Journal poll), her disapproval ratings are significantly worse: down to 57% from 44% in the Journal’s August poll.

Just 2% of voters statewide are unsure of their opinion of Martinez (down from 14% in August), a surprisingly low number and sign that undecided voters are overwhelmingly seeing Martinez negatively.

Just 25% of Democrats think the governor is doing a good job, while 68% of Republicans continue to support her (off from her high of 89% in 2011).

Martinez is most popular with 18-29 year olds (38% think she is doing a good job), while voters across all age ranges more equally share their “poor” performance ranking.

Bottom Line: Public opinion on Martinez’s job performance as governor is baked in with nearly 6-in-10 New Mexicans against Martinez. That coalition includes 75% of Democrats, a majority of independents and the largest cohort of Republicans Martinez has ever seen oppose her.

The poll was designed by PPP pollsters to test various budget proposals before the New Mexico legislature and the answers to those questions helped explain, at least in part, voter opposition to Martinez.

Though Martinez continues to demand that legislators cut more from an already underfunded budget, New Mexico voters – Democrats, independents and Republicans alike – support raising taxes on the rich, cigarettes and soda and delaying more tax cuts for big corporations.

Instead, they’d rather see the governor and legislators invest more in education, public safety and health care programs to help those less fortunate than themselves.

That’s a big problem for a governor who continues to stand with big corporations and her donors over the wishes of working New Mexicans.

Overall, independent voters prefer Democratic plans and priorities over Republican priorities almost across the board. Public opinion of Gov. Martinez has solidified (just 2% of 2016 voters are undecided on her), with 57% of voters disapproving of her job performance. This seems to carry through in various proposals where voters consistently oppose plans in line with her proposals to cut more from the budget to avoid raising revenue. Less than ½ of voters support her general “cuts over revenue” position in general, but nowhere in any proposals that we tested did a majority of voters support cutting programs over enhancing revenues.

Democrats seem to have very little to lose by publicly opposing Martinez and Republican plans. While the Republican base is solid, Democrats are more united in opposition and there is little wiggle room for persuasion. Very few voters (2-5% on average, per question) had no opinion on policy questions.